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Friday, 11 May 2012

My Top Baby and Toddler Buys

As a new parent, I bought a lot of baby paraphernalia,
most of which was used once and never again. I think, as a new parent in that
irrational sleep deprived haze you get stuck in, I felt that if I had all the
kit, I’d be doing a better job. So, through trial and error, and from talking
to my shrewder fellow parent, I have compiled a list of some really great baby
and toddler items.

Baby Bjorn BabySitter Balance. Sadly not a
balancing babysitter, but a baby chair. We referred to it as ‘the bouncy chair’
and adore it. To the point, where I have already found it and made sure it is
still in one piece for baby number 2. I don’t think this is the only brand on
the market, but it is the one I got, having purchased a automatic swinging
chair and finding it too big and cumbersome for my daughter and sitting room.
This one fold flat, looks great, is fully washable and can be bounced with a
toe, so almost construed as a form of exercise. It’s well worth every penny.

Stokke Tripp Trapp High Chair. This simple
wooden high chair, is great for toddlers. It simply slides up against the
table, with a safety strap for little ones, and steps up to the seat for bigger
children. It looks great, comes in lots of colours, and doesn’t require
complicated straps and manoeuvring of a wriggling toddler. It is also really
easy to wipe clean, with no secret hiding places for those renegade peas to
escape to.

Munchkin Snack Catcher Pots. These little pots have little flappy bits of plastic to keep snacks in the pot, whilst allowing chubby fingers to root around and find their snacks. They are great for things like raisins and grapes, which have a habit of going everywhere, and really help to encourage finger food and self feeding, which has been a lifesaver for me.

Medela Freestyle Breast Pump. I really
struggled with breast feeding my daughter. I didn’t make enough milk, and was
told to pump between feeds to increase milk production, which when you are
doing 3 hourly feed cycles, gave me precious little time to sleep, which made
the problem worse. The final straw for me was having pumped for what felt like
hours and gathered enough milk for one feed (a first), my husband knocked the
bottle over before I managed to put the lid on. Suffice to say, cross words
ensued. However, dramas aside, if you are going to pump, this was by far and
away the best model o the market. I tried four different models (sleep deprived
haze of irrationality strikes again), and this one yielded the most in the
quickest time. It’s ridiculously expensive, but if it gives you a hour or two
more sleep a day, then it might be worth it…?

Duvet Playmat. We bought a Fisher Price
playmat for our daughter, which was great, with lots of colours and noises, but
having wooden floors in our sitting room, I was always worried about her being
uncomfortable. My very clever friend Sareeta, who has a gorgeous little boy the
same age as Fifi, had the best solution. She simply folded over a single duvet,
sewed it up and halved a single duvet cover, to make the comfiest playmat to
leave your little one on. You can decide how thick you want it and what
colour/pattern cover, and the cover is fully washable…genius!

All credit for this amazing invention go to Mrs S. x

iPad. I have posted about this before,
so apologies if you are reading the same thing twice, but the iPad has been a
lifesaver to us since having a baby. It holds a huge host of amazing (and dare
I say it, educational) apps in one
small light weigh device, hundreds of television programs and films and I like
to think it helps with hand eye coordination. You can buy cheap straps to put
it on the head rest of your car, which is guaranteed to keep a little one quiet
for longer than a rendition of ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’, and when baby
finally decides to go to sleep, you can catch up on all your celebrity gossip.
Not the cheapest baby toy in the world, but my daughter’s favourite, and one
that grows with her through the years (well, until the iPad 4 is released!).